SixStringSlinger
Poster Extraordinaire
So I love fuzz. It's by no means the only kind of dirt I like to use, but it's probably the most fun and distinctive. However, the biggest wall of noise I could conjure would often still get lost among the instruments. I think it's less a volume thing and more an EQ thing. Having everything be massively distorted probably doesn't help either, despite being part of the point.
I was never into stacking dirt pedals, but in fiddling around I found that my fuzz pedals seem to like going into a Boss SD-1. The fuzzes held their own fine on chords and riffs, and the SD-1 helped keep the more sing-y, bendy stuff from getting lost. I'm sure this has to do with the SD-1's mid-bump more than anything.
So I decided to perform some mods on my SD-1, mostly ones mentioned in other threads here by @11 Gauge, to fine-tune it for this application. Here's how that went:
First I played with the stock pedal for a bit to get a feel for it. Absolutely nothing objectively wrong with it. It's classic pedal for a reason. The mid-bump can give it a slightly nasally, congested kind of sound, though I'm sure that's also very dependent on what else is going on in your rig.
So I decided to try the classic C6 mod: Find the capacitor labelled C6, and get rid of it. This is supposed to get rid of that congested tone, and it did. It wasn't very dramatic, but it was a "someone just took the blanket off my amp" kind of thing. So far so good.
Then I decided to change the cap at C5 to a higher value (I used .033uf) which, if I recall, serves to tweak the sweep of the tone pot. I also replaced the resistor at R6 with a 6.8k (per @cousinpaul 's suggestion) to let a little more bass come through. Both of these mods worked great.
However, this is were it gets interesting. At this point I was testing the pedal after my various fuzzes as well as on its own, and it no longer seemed to have the special middy something that made it work so well as a fuzz solo boost. So I did something crazy and decided to put the C6 cap back in.
Now we're talking. The bass comes trough, the treble is easy to tame or unleash as I please, and the mids are doing what they're there to do. I also added a 33pf cap in parallel with the diode at D4. I believe I did it before restoring the C6 cap, because @11 Gauge recommended doing so (as well as increasing the value of C5) in conjunction with the common C6 mod, but I can't recall now. In any case, it's not bothering me.
The pedal works in a very interesting way now when run after a fuzz. The Level and Tone controls work as you might expect. The Gain control has some effect ton volume, but itdoesn't seem to affect gain in this application, though that's probably because the gain on my fuzzes is already run high. What's interesting is that the Gain control also seems to work as a sort of secondary tone control.
Take my Fuzz Factory which, after I added a switch like that on the Fat Fuzz Factory, still tends to favor the higher end. When I use the SD-1 on it I set the Gain at about 50%, which doesn't affect the gain as I hear it but gives it more low end.
On the other hand, my Nano Big Muff can be kind of woofy and woolly on its own. So when I add the SD-1 I turn up the gain to add a little clarity.
It's as if the Gain control (at least from about 50%-100%) sets the low end while the Tone control fine-tunes the high end.
Again, I stress that this when I use it after a fuzz. On its own the SD-1 sounds like an SD-1, albeit with more bass and a more usable (for me) tone control.
One more thing: I tried putting another diode (D5 or D6, I'm not sure; whichever is physically farther from D4) on a switch so that I could toggle between symmetrical and asymmetrical clipping. It could be that I did it wrong (if so, please enlighten me) but I could not hear the slightest difference. Low gain, high gain, guitar volume up or down. So I took that out and put the diode back in on it's own.
I was never into stacking dirt pedals, but in fiddling around I found that my fuzz pedals seem to like going into a Boss SD-1. The fuzzes held their own fine on chords and riffs, and the SD-1 helped keep the more sing-y, bendy stuff from getting lost. I'm sure this has to do with the SD-1's mid-bump more than anything.
So I decided to perform some mods on my SD-1, mostly ones mentioned in other threads here by @11 Gauge, to fine-tune it for this application. Here's how that went:
First I played with the stock pedal for a bit to get a feel for it. Absolutely nothing objectively wrong with it. It's classic pedal for a reason. The mid-bump can give it a slightly nasally, congested kind of sound, though I'm sure that's also very dependent on what else is going on in your rig.
So I decided to try the classic C6 mod: Find the capacitor labelled C6, and get rid of it. This is supposed to get rid of that congested tone, and it did. It wasn't very dramatic, but it was a "someone just took the blanket off my amp" kind of thing. So far so good.
Then I decided to change the cap at C5 to a higher value (I used .033uf) which, if I recall, serves to tweak the sweep of the tone pot. I also replaced the resistor at R6 with a 6.8k (per @cousinpaul 's suggestion) to let a little more bass come through. Both of these mods worked great.
However, this is were it gets interesting. At this point I was testing the pedal after my various fuzzes as well as on its own, and it no longer seemed to have the special middy something that made it work so well as a fuzz solo boost. So I did something crazy and decided to put the C6 cap back in.
Now we're talking. The bass comes trough, the treble is easy to tame or unleash as I please, and the mids are doing what they're there to do. I also added a 33pf cap in parallel with the diode at D4. I believe I did it before restoring the C6 cap, because @11 Gauge recommended doing so (as well as increasing the value of C5) in conjunction with the common C6 mod, but I can't recall now. In any case, it's not bothering me.
The pedal works in a very interesting way now when run after a fuzz. The Level and Tone controls work as you might expect. The Gain control has some effect ton volume, but itdoesn't seem to affect gain in this application, though that's probably because the gain on my fuzzes is already run high. What's interesting is that the Gain control also seems to work as a sort of secondary tone control.
Take my Fuzz Factory which, after I added a switch like that on the Fat Fuzz Factory, still tends to favor the higher end. When I use the SD-1 on it I set the Gain at about 50%, which doesn't affect the gain as I hear it but gives it more low end.
On the other hand, my Nano Big Muff can be kind of woofy and woolly on its own. So when I add the SD-1 I turn up the gain to add a little clarity.
It's as if the Gain control (at least from about 50%-100%) sets the low end while the Tone control fine-tunes the high end.
Again, I stress that this when I use it after a fuzz. On its own the SD-1 sounds like an SD-1, albeit with more bass and a more usable (for me) tone control.
One more thing: I tried putting another diode (D5 or D6, I'm not sure; whichever is physically farther from D4) on a switch so that I could toggle between symmetrical and asymmetrical clipping. It could be that I did it wrong (if so, please enlighten me) but I could not hear the slightest difference. Low gain, high gain, guitar volume up or down. So I took that out and put the diode back in on it's own.
